The big dig-out: Amazing stories of survival as one woman tells how she wrote a goodbye note to her children while trapped in the snow for 12 hours as America’s East Coast recovers from winter storm Nemo

Storm battered Northeast Friday night into Saturday morning

New York City got just over 11 inches of snow and Boston got more than two feet

Stranded for hours on a snow-covered road, Priscilla Arena prayed, took out a sheet of loose-leaf paper and wrote what she thought might be her last words to her husband and children.

She told her 9 1/2-year-old daughter, Sophia, she was 'picture-perfect beautiful.' And she advised her 5 1/2-year-old son, John: 'Remember all the things that mommy taught you.

‘Never say you hate someone you love. Take pride in the things you do, especially your family. ... Don't get angry at the small things; it's a waste of precious time and energy. Realize that all people are different, but most people are good.

Recovering: With tears in her eyes, Pirscilla Arena reads letters she wrote to her children as she spent the night in her car in Farmingville after the car got stuck in the snow while traveling home after work

Narrowly escaped: Wayne Gingo, of Medford, New York struggles to gets back into his truck on Saturday afternoon after becoming stuck in the snow at 1.45am on the Long Island Expressway

Trapped: Mr Gingo was driving home from his job as a postal worker at JFK Airport when a car driving the wrong way forced him to swerve and become struck on the roadside

Pummeled: A white car is seen buried in the snow along the Long Island Expressway in New York on Saturday after hurricane-force winds pummeled the northeast

Stranded: A Hunter EMS Ambulance is seen stranded in the snow on the Long Island Expressway after the blizzard

Arena, who was rescued in an Army canvas truck after about 12 hours, was one of hundreds of drivers who spent a fearful, chilly night stuck on highways in a blizzard that plastered New York's Long Island with more than 30 inches of snow, its ferocity taking many by surprise despite warnings to stay off the roads.

Even plows were mired in the snow or blocked by stuck cars, so emergency workers had to resort to snowmobiles to try to reach motorists.

Four-wheel-drive vehicles, tractor-trailers and a couple of ambulances could be seen stranded along the roadway and ramps of the Long Island Expressway. Stuck drivers peeked out from time to time, running their cars intermittently to warm up as they waited for help.

With many still stranded hours after the snow stopped, Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged other communities to send plows to help dig out in eastern Long Island, which took the state's hardest hit by far in the massive Northeast storm.

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In Connecticut, where the storm dumped more than 3 feet of snow in some places, the National Guard rescued about 90 stranded motorists, taking a few to hospitals with hypothermia.

The scenes came almost exactly two years after a blizzard marooned at least 1,500 cars and buses on Chicago's iconic Lake Shore Drive, leaving hundreds of people shivering in their vehicles for as long as 12 hours and questioning why the city didn't close the crucial thoroughfare earlier.

Cuomo and other officials were similarly asked why they didn't act to shut down major highways in Long Island in advance of the storm, especially given the sprawling area's reputation for gridlock. The expressway is often called 'the world's longest parking lot.'

'The snow just swallowed them up. It came down so hard and so fast,' explained Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone.

Bail out: Stranded vehicles litter the roadway along Route 25 in Lake Grove, New York on Saturday morning where many had to be rescued and were treated for hypothermia

Snowbound vehicles remained stranded on Saturday along Route 347 in Lake Grove

A man tries to free his car from the snow among dozens of other motorists stranded

A man does his best to move his trapped vehicle out of the snow as it continues to storm down around him

'That's not an easy call,' added
Cuomo, who noted that people wanted to get home and that officials had
warned them to take precautions because the worst of the snow could
start by the evening rush hour.

'Even though we would dig ourselves out and push forward, the snow kept piling, and therefore we all got stuck, all of us'

- Priscilla Arena

'People need to act responsibly in these situations,' Cuomo said.

But many workers didn't have the option of taking off early Friday, Arena noted. The 41-year-old sales account manager headed home from an optical supply business in Ronkonkoma around 4 p.m. She soon found her SUV stuck along a road in nearby Farmingville.

'Even though we would dig ourselves out and push forward, the snow kept piling, and therefore we all got stuck, all of us,' she recalled later at Brookhaven Town Hall, where several dozen stranded motorists were taken after being rescued. Many others opted to stay with their cars.

Richard Ebbrecht left his Brooklyn chiropractic office around 3 p.m. for his home in Middle Island, about 60 miles away, calculating that he could make the drive home before the worst of the blizzard set in. He was wrong.

As the snow came rushing down faster than he'd foreseen, he got stuck six or seven times on the expressway and on other roads. Drivers began helping each other shovel and push, he said, but to no avail. He finally gave up and spent the night in his car on a local thoroughfare, only about two miles from his home.

Impassable: The entrance ramp to the Long Island Expressway is seen closed in the Suffolk County area of New York

The Long Island Expressway opened briefly today but will be closed again on Sunday for roadwork following the deadly storm

A New York State Department of Transportation plow is seen in need of help as a worker takes a shovel around its tires

Waiting for help: Four-wheel-drive vehicles, tractor-trailers and a couple of ambulances could be seen stranded along the roadway and ramps of the Long Island Expressway

Risky roads: New Yorker, like Connecticut which also had around 90 stranded motorists, did not close their roads on Friday night, instead allowing people to try and drive home

'I could run my car and keep the heat on and listen to the radio a little bit,' he said.

He walked home around at 8 a.m., leaving his car.

Late-shifters including Wayne Jingo had little choice but to risk it if they wanted to get home.

By early afternoon, he'd been stuck in his pickup truck alongside the Long Island Expressway for nearly 12 hours.

He'd
left his job around midnight as a postal worker at Kennedy Airport and
headed home to Medford, about 50 miles east. He was at an exit in
Ronkonkoma - almost home - around 1:45 a.m. when another driver came
barreling at him westbound, the wrong way, he said. Jingo swerved to avoid the oncoming car, missed the exit and ended up stuck on the highway's grass shoulder.

He
rocked the truck back and forth to try to free it, but it only sank
down deeper into the snow and shredded one of his tires. He called 911. A
police officer came by at 9:30 a.m. and said he would send a tow truck.

At 1 p.m. Saturday, Jingo was still waiting.

'I would have been fine if I didn't have to swerve,' he said.

Tucking in: Many drivers worked through the night trying to dig themselves out of their cars but in the end most found themselves undeniably trapped and resorted to spending the night behind the wheel

No where to go: When the Expressway reopened traffic quickly swarmed in on a road that's already commonly called by locals, The World's Largest Parking Lot

Poured on: Several communities in New York (pictured) and across New England got more than 2 feet but the highest yet to be seen was in Milford Connecticut where 39 inches of snow was reported

In Middle Island, a Wal-Mart remained
unofficially open long past midnight to accommodate more than two dozen
motorists who were stranded on nearby roads.

'We're here to mind the store, but we can't let people freeze out there,' manager Jerry Greek told Newsday.

Officials
weren't aware of any deaths among the stranded drivers, Cuomo said.
Suffolk County police said no serious injuries had been reported among
stuck motorists, but officers were still systematically checking
stranded vehicles late Saturday afternoon.

While the expressway eventually opened Saturday, about 30 miles of the highway was to be closed again Sunday for snow removal.

Susan
Cassara left her job at a Middle Island day care center around 6:30
p.m., after driving some of the children home because their parents
couldn't get there to pick them up.

She
got stuck on one road until about 2:30 a.m. Then a plow helped her get
out - but she got stuck again, she said. Finally, an Army National
Guardsman got to her on a snowmobile after 4 a.m.

'It
was so cool. Strapped on, held on and came all the way here' to the
makeshift shelter at the Brookhaven Town Hall, she said. 'Something for
my bucket list.'

About
510,000 homes and businesses remained without power late Saturday night,
down from a total of about 650,000, and some could be cold and dark for
days.

Record breaking: A parking meter pokes out of a snow bank in Portland, Maine where more than 30 inches of snow fell breaking the record for the biggest storm on record

A lonely woman is seen digging out her car after it was blocked in by drifting snow in Portland

Heave! A man shovels snow off his car on M street in Boston on Saturday where up to 2 feet of snow fell but just short of the city's record of 27.6 inches set in 2003

George Nickerson does his best to dig out his vehicle buried under more than 2 feet of snow in Ellington, Connecticut

Roads across
the New York-to-Boston corridor of roughly 25 million people were
impassable. Cars were entombed by drifts. Some people found the wet,
heavy snow packed so high against their homes they couldn't get their
doors open.

'It's like
lifting cement. They say it's 2 feet, but I think it's more like 3
feet,' said Michael Levesque, who was shoveling snow in Quincy, Mass.,
for a landscaping company.

In Providence, where the drifts were 5 feet high and telephone lines encrusted with ice and snow drooped under the weight, Jason Harrison labored for nearly three hours to clear his blocked driveway and front walk and still had more work to do. His snowblower, he said, 'has already paid for itself.'

At least five deaths in the U.S. were blamed on the overnight snowstorm, including an 11-year-old boy in Boston who was overcome by carbon monoxide as he sat in a running car to keep warm while his father shoveled Saturday morning.

Because the back of the vehicle was
covered by snow, the exhaust apparently flowed into the car,
overwhelming the child, who was pronounced dead at Boston Medical
Center. Officials say the boy's father suffered a heart attack,
but survived.

An 80-year-old woman was killed by a hit-and-run driver while clearing her driveway, and a 40-year-old man collapsed while shoveling snow. One man, 73, slipped outside his home and was found dead on Saturday, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy said.

In Poughkeepsie, New York, a man in his 70s was struck and killed on a snowy roadway, local media reported.

A 30-year-old motorist in New Hampshire also died when his car went off the road, but the man's health might have been a factor in the accident, state authorities said.

Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee cautioned that while the snow had stopped, the danger hadn't passed: 'People need to take this storm seriously, even after it's over. If you have any kind of heart condition, be careful with the shoveling.'

In New Jersey where a foot of snow was reported, snow glazes vehicles at the Wayne Ford car dealership

Workers at a car dealership on Route 6 in Carmel, New York clean snow from the cars in their lot

Sea of white: Mary Leahy shovels out her sidewalk during a blizzard in Medford, Massachusetts

Pleasant stroll: People walk along the Brooklyn Bridge following the massive nor'easter

Perfect storm: NOAA's GOES-13 satellite shows two low pressure systems coming together to form a giant nor'easter centered right over New England

Picture perfect: A man shovels the front of his home on Third street in the South Boston neighborhood of Boston

Back in business: Patrick Cramphorn places an Open flag outside the P.I. Beachcoma Restaurant in Newburyport, Mass., as snow winds down in Plum Island

Blowing with hurricane-force winds of
more than 80 mph in places, the storm hit hard along the heavily
populated Interstate 95 corridor between New York City and Maine.
Milford., Conn., got 38 inches of snow, and Portland, Maine, recorded
31.9, shattering a 1979 record. Several communities in New York and
across New England got more than 2 feet.

Still,
the storm was not as bad as some of the forecasts led many to fear, and
not as dire as the Blizzard of '78, used by longtime New Englanders as
the benchmark by which all other winter storms are measured.

By
midday Saturday, the National Weather Service reported preliminary
snowfall totals of 24.9 inches in Boston, or fifth on the city's
all-time list. Bradley Airport near Hartford, Conn., got 22 inches, for
the No. 2 spot in the record books there.

Concord,
N.H., got 24 inches of snow, the second-highest amount on record and a
few inches short of the reading from the great Blizzard of 1888.

In
New York, where Central Park recorded 11 inches, not even enough to
make the Top 10 list, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city 'dodged a
bullet' and its streets were 'in great shape.' The three major airports -
LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark, N.J. - were up and running by late
morning after shutting down the evening before.

Most
of the power outages were in Massachusetts, where more than 400,000
homes and businesses were left in the dark. Hours before midnight
Saturday, about 344,000 customers remained without power. In Rhode
Island, a peak of around 180,000 customers lost power, or about
one-third of the state. Late night, the total was down to 130,000.

Connecticut
crews had slowly whittled down the outage total to 31,000 from a high
of about 38,000, and power was restored to nearly all of the more than
15,000 in Maine and New Hampshire who were left without lights after the
storm hit.

Tropics: A man carries a pineapple while walking along 42nd Street in New York

Frosty: A dog pauses near a snow man in Central Park, which has received almost a foot of snow

Great view: People look over a frozen pond in Central Park, which only days earlier had but a thin layer of ice

Lucky break: At just over 11 inches of snow, New York was largely spared by the works of Winter Storm Nemo which buried the East Coast with a blanket of white

Snow blankets the shoulders of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Union Sqaure

Massachusetts,
Connecticut and Rhode Island imposed travel bans until 4 p.m. to keep
cars off the road and let plows do their work, and the National Guard
helped clear highways in Connecticut, where more than 240 auto accidents
were reported. The Guardsmen rescued about 90 motorists, including a
few who had hypothermia and were taken to hospitals.

Around
the New York metropolitan area, many victims of Superstorm Sandy were
mercifully spared another round of flooding, property damage and power
failures.

'I was very lucky and I never even
lost power,' said Susan Kelly of Bayville. 'We were dry as anything. My
new roof was fantastic. Other than digging out, this storm was a nice
storm.' As for the shoveling, 'I got two hours of exercise.'

At
New York's Fashion Week, women tottered on 4-inch heels through the
snow to get to the tents to see designers' newest collections.

Across
much of New England, streets were empty of cars and dotted instead with
children who had never seen so much snow and were jumping into snow
banks and making forts. Snow was waist-high in the streets of Boston.
Plows made some thoroughfares passable but piled even more snow on cars
parked on the city's narrow streets.

Boston's Logan Airport was not expected to resume operations until late Saturday night.

Life
went on as usual for some. In Portland, Karen Willis Beal got her dream
wedding on Saturday - complete with a snowstorm just like the one that
hit before her parents married in December 1970.

Rosy cheeks: A child sits buried in the snow waiting for his father to take his photo in Central Park in New York, which saw more than eight inches of snow

Wild ride: Children slide down a snow-covered hill on an inner tube in Central Park in New York

Social scene: People gather to toboggan and walk their dogs in Central Park

Work and play: While carefree New Yorkers enjoyed a day in Central Park with their kids Saturday, left, Caitlyn Morris helped her grandmother clear her sidewalk of snow during in Medford, Massachusetts, which was severely impacted by the blizzard

Slip-n-slide: A child drags his toboggan up a hill in Central Park in New York, where about 11 inches of snow fell overnight

Dog day afternoon: Dogs rolling around and playing in the snow blanketing the ground in Central Park in New York

Country life: A pair of calfs feed in the snow at Eden Pond Farm in Leyden, Massachusetts

Shovel ready: Donnalyn Sullivan clears out her front steps during a blizzard in Medford, Massachusetts

Flood fears: The ocean overflows the sea wall on Winthrop Shore Drive in Winthrop, Massachusetts, raising the specter of coastal flooding as the storm lingers into the day

'I have always wanted a snowstorm for my wedding, and my wish has come true to the max,' she said.

In
Massachusetts, the National Guard and Worcester emergency workers
teamed up to deliver a baby at the height of the storm at the family's
home. Everyone was fine.

Some
spots in Massachusetts had to be evacuated because of coastal flooding,
including Salisbury Beach, where around 40 people were ordered out.

Among
them were Ed and Nancy Bemis, who heard waves crashing and rolling
underneath their home, which sits on stilts. At one point, Ed Bemis went
outside to take pictures, and a wave came up, blew out their door and
knocked down his wife.

'The objects were flying everywhere.
If you went in there, it looks like ... two big guys got in a big, big
fight. It tore the doors right off their hinges. It's a mess,' he said.

One of hardest-hit places was
Connecticut, where even emergency responders found themselves stuck on
highways all night. In Fairfield, police and firefighters could not come
in to work, so the overnight shift stayed on.

Several state police cars were also
stuck in deep snow in Maine, where stranded drivers were warned to
expect long waits for tow trucks. Cars were entombed by drifts. And some
people woke up in the morning to find the snow packed so high they
couldn't get their doors open.

Airlines canceled more than 5,300
flights through Saturday. New York City's three major airports were up
and running again by late morning after shutting down the evening
before. Logan Airport in Boston was not expected to resume operations
until late Saturday night.

Across much of New England, streets
were empty of cars and dotted instead with children who had never seen
so much snow and were jumping into snowbanks and making forts.

Snowed in: Nurses walk to work before dawn outside Tufts Medical Center in Boston, which was blanketed by about two feet of snow

Walloped: A house and vehicle sits buried in snow as blizzard conditions continue following an already close to two feet of snowfall in Norfolk, Massachusetts

Hard work: Andrew Laliberte, of Billerica, Mass., digs a pathway through a high snow drift in Boston

Whiteout: A person clears snow in the Back Bay neighborhood during a lingering blizzard

Winter wonderland: A pedestrian and a car make their way through a severe winter storm in Somerville, Massachusetts

Shutdown: The reactor at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Mass., closed down Friday night during the massive blizzard

Snow
was waist-high in the mostly empty streets of Boston. Plows made some
thoroughfares passable but piled even more snow on cars parked on the
city's narrow streets.

A nuclear power plant in
Massachusetts lost power and automatically shut down late on Friday
during a massive blizzard across the northeastern United States, the
nuclear regulator said.

The reactor at the Pilgrim Nuclear
Power Plant in Plymouth closed down with no problems and there was no
threat to public safety, an official at the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission said.

'There was no impact on plant workers or the public,' he said.

The
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Saturday that diesel generators
were supplying electricity to the plant, which was stable.

The snowstorm, which continued on
Saturday, disrupted thousands of flights and left more than 200,000
people without power in Massachusetts alone.

Flooding was also a concern along the
coast. The possibility led to the evacuation of two neighborhoods in
Quincy, Mass., south of Boston, and of 20 to 30 people in oceanfront
homes in Salisbury in northeastern Massachusetts, authorities in those
towns said.

Children playing in the snow in Milford, Connecticut, which was the town hit the hardest by the storm, getting 38 inches

Dark and stormy: Kevin Barry took this photo of New York City at the height of the massive nor'easter pummeling the region

Blizzard: Snowflakes blowing in strong gusts of wind on the streets of Manhattan

But it did not appear to create major
problems in New York and New Jersey, states hit hardest during last
October's Superstorm Sandy.

Snow piled up so high in some places Saturday that people couldn't open
their doors to get outside. Streets were mostly deserted throughout New
England save for plow crews and a few hardy souls walking dogs or
venturing out to take pictures.

Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee
cautioned that while the snow had stopped, the danger hadn't passed:
‘People need to take this storm seriously, even after it's over. If you
have any kind of heart condition, be careful with the shoveling.’

In Boston's Financial District, the
only sound was an army of snowblowers clearing sidewalks. Streets in
many places were inaccessible.

Even the U.S. Postal Service closed post offices and suspended mail delivery Saturday in New England.

Some of the worst of the storm
appeared to hit Connecticut, where all roads were ordered closed
Saturday. The snow made travel nearly impossible even for emergency
responders who found themselves stuck on highways all night.

In
the shoreline community of Fairfield, police and firefighters could not
come in to work, so the overnight shift was staying on duty, said First
Selectman Michael Tetreau.

Official update: New York City Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference Saturday morning to offer an update on the progress of the post-storm cleanup

Cleanup: Hospital emergency room worker Susan Johnson shovels out her car to go to work during a severe winter storm in Boston

Winter magic: A street sign is seen covered in snow in Manhasset, New York

Show must go on: Out and about: A woman checks her mobile phone outside Lincoln Center, home of New York's Fashion Week shows

Morning workout: Hank Luth brushes snow piled high on his car parked in his driveway on Terry Ct. in Glen Head, New York

In New York City, the snow total in Central Park was 8.1 inches by 3am

Big dig: Steve Young shovels out his sidewalk during a severe winter storm in Boston

‘It's
a real challenge out there,’ Tetreau said. ‘The roads are not passable
at this point. We are asking everyone to stay home and stay safe.’

The wind-whipped snowstorm mercifully
arrived at the start of a weekend, which meant fewer cars on the road
and extra time for sanitation crews to clear the mess before commuters
in the New York-to-Boston region of roughly 25 million people have to go
back to work. But it also could mean a weekend cooped up indoors.

More than 100 stuck vehicles had to be removed from the Long Island Expressway that
stretches nearly 70 miles east from Manhattan's Queens-Midtown Tunnel to
Suffolk County on outer edges of Long Island. The road is expected to remain a
challenge for emergency vehicles.

‘One hundred is a good estimate (of
the number of cars abandoned),’ said Lt. Daniel Meyers, a spokesperson
for the Suffolk County Highway Patrol. ‘We're waiting for the sun to
come up so we can get a better count.

‘A lot of these cars have been buried
under the snow. Right now, we're out looking for disabled motorists, and
getting them to safe locations. We're pretty sure there are no drivers
left anymore.’

Most of the vehicles became disabled,
or stuck behind other disabled vehicles, simply because residents
refused to heed warnings to stay off the roads.

The disabled vehicles will impede the process of clearing the Expressway.

Winter fun: Peter Webster sleds down Chestnut Street with his children William (R) and Georgia (C) in Boston

Frigid aftermath: Snow covers cars along Third street in South Boston after a behemoth storm packing hurricane-force wind gusts and blizzard conditions swept through the Northeast overnight

Overwhelmed: Cars sit buried by snowdrifts in a parking lot in Southington, Conn., after a heavy snowfall and high winds from a storm dumped more than 2 feet of snow on New England

All in a day's work: An employee carries a mannequin outside Lincoln Center for the New York Fashion Week

Battered city: A pair of parking meters are covered with ice and snow early Saturday in Boston

WHEN WEATHER SYSTEMS COLLIDE: WHAT'S CAUSED THE BLIZZARD?

Winter storm Nemo is the result of two low-pressure weather systems combining.

One is moving from the Ohio Valley and the other is a coastal low-pressure system that is moving northeast.

Both
are following jet streams - the first is following an Arctic jet stream
across the Midwest, while the other is following a subtropical jet
stream moving from the Gulf of Mexico.

This subtropical system contains warm air, which holds moisture, while the Arctic system is full of cold winter air.

When they merge, they produce strong winds and snowfall - like those which will rattle the Northeast this weekend.

It's very demanding on all the assets
we have here,’ Meyers said. ‘The plows can't plow because of the
disabled motorists, and the snow keeps piling up, piling up. It's a very
daunting task.’

Near Boston where a wind gust
of 76 mph was recorded at Logan Airport, 56-year-old Eileen O'Brien of blacked-out Sagamore Beach was busy shoveling out her deck for fear it might collapse under the weight of all their snow.

‘This is crazy. I mean it's just nuts,’ she said.

As the pirate flag outside her door snapped and popped in gale-force
winds Saturday, she pointed to the snowman she'd built 16 hours earlier,
when her mood and the snow were both lighter — and the Upper Cape
village still had power.

‘My thermostat keeps dropping. Right now it's 54 inside, and I don't
have any wood,’ said O'Brien, a respiratory care practitioner. ‘There's
nothing I can do to keep warm except maybe start the grill and make some
coffee.’

In
heavily Catholic Boston, the archdiocese urged parishioners to be
prudent about attending Sunday Mass and reminded them that, under church
law, the obligation 'does not apply when there is grave difficulty in
fulfilling this obligation.'

Hartford,
Connecticut, was blanketed by 34 inches of snow and St. James, New
York, recorded 27.5 inches, with more coming down, the weather service
said.

Hartford Mayor Pedro
Segarra said street-clearing crews had been forced to suspend operations
as snow fell at a rate of more than 4 inches an hour.

'I've never seen snow fall like this all at once,' he told CNN.

Halfway through what had been a mild
winter across the Northeast, blizzard warnings were posted from parts of
New Jersey to Maine.

Early snowfall was blamed for a 19-car pileup in Cumberland, Maine, that caused minor injuries.

In Manhattan, streets normally
bustling after midnight, were quiet Saturday but for the hum of snow
blowers, the scrape of shovels and the laughter from late night revelers
who braved the snow.

Snowy Saturday: A woman takes pictures of her dog in the snow in the Seaport World Trade Center area of Boston, where a travel ban remained in effect

Gusty: Snowflakes falling on Boston were being whipped about by strong winds howling at 75mph

Frosted: Snow and ice cover the side of a building building in the Seaport World Trade Center area of Boston

Alternative transportation: A pedestrian uses skis to travel through the deserted snow-covered streets of Boston

SPIRIT OF '78? NORTHEAST'S EPIC STORM REMEMBERED 35 YEARS ON

Marked by massive snow totals and hurricane-force winds, the Blizzard of 1978 is one of the Northeast’s most epic storms.

The
weather system dumped as much as 27 inches of snow in Massachusetts and
Rhode Island. There was little or no visibility for drivers.

About
100 deaths are attributed to the storm - with more than a dozen of them
along Massachusetts' Route 128, where drivers suffered carbon monoxide
poisoning after getting trapped in their cars.

Because
the storm came during a full moon, there was a double threat of a storm
surge and record snowfall, which caused about $520million in damage.

Also reported was the rare phenomenon of 'thundersnow' - a thunderstorm that drops snow instead of rain.

In addition, a lack of forewarning was blamed after residents said they were unprepared

While
some stubborn New Yorkers got themselves stranded, motorists in
neighboring Connecticut and Massachusetts were ordered off state roads.

Connecticut
Governor Dannel P. Malloy on Saturday ordered all roads closed until
further notice as the state deals with a storm that dumped more than two
feet of snow over much of the state, saying stalled or abandoned
vehicles will only slow the recovery process.

Drivers
and even some troopers have been getting stuck on the snow-covered
highways, said Lt. J. Paul Vance, a spokesperson for state police. He
said a pedestrian was struck by a vehicle and killed Friday night in
Prospect.

In Massachusetts,
Gov. Deval Patrick ordered a statewide travel ban, believed to be the
first since the blizzard of 1978, which has since been lifted. New York closed Interstate 84 to truck
traffic between Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Shortly after 4pm Saturday, the governor of Connecticut and Rhode Island followed suit and also lifted their driving bans.

National
Guard troops headed to coastal communities on the south shore of
Massachusetts to assist in evacuations due to giant waves that pummeled
the beaches at high tide for fear that they may overwhelm homes,
according to Boston.com.

Shortly after 4pm Saturday, the National Weather Service has cancelled all coastal flood warnings for New England.

In
Maine, heavy snow was blamed for a 19-car pileup in Cumberland early
Friday that took four hours to clear.

Nemo was blamed for a
multiple-vehicle accident in Vermont, and a series of other crashes on
Interstate 89 in Bolton and South Burlington.

In Toronto, at least 350
storm-related traffic collisions were reported, and at least three
people died in southern Ontario.

Several
professional and college sports teams were forced to rearrange their
travel plans as Nemo swept through the Northeast.

The NBA's New York
Knicks were stuck in Minnesota after playing the Timberwolves on Friday
night, hoping to try to fly home sometime Saturday.

The
San Antonio Spurs were also staying overnight in Detroit after seeing
their 11-game winning streak end against the Pistons, awaiting word on
when they might be able to fly to New York for their game Sunday night
at Brooklyn.

The
Brooklyn Nets planned to take a train home instead of flying from
Washington D.C. after losing to the Wizards on Friday night.

Before the first snowflake had
fallen, Boston, Providence, R.I., Hartford, Conn., and other New England
cities canceled school Friday. In southeast Michigan alone, nearly 700 schools were closed.